A spreading infection

Sunday

Jul 28, 2013 at 12:01 AM

By Ken Stephens The Hutchinson News

In 2009, a consultant's report found the condition of Hutchinson's housing stock had declined appreciably since 2001, and a new analysis of data from the Reno County Appraiser by The Hutchinson News shows that the decline has been unchecked since then.

Out of more than 14,000 residential parcels in the city, 733 declined in condition since 2009, according to the data. Of those, 383 dropped from "average" or better to "fair," "poor" or "unsound," the three worst categories on a seven-step scale of condition ratings used by the appraiser's office.

About 29 percent of Hutchinson's housing, or 4,198 residences, is now rated fair, poor or unsound. That's up one percentage point in four years.

A geographic analysis shows that the fair, poor and unsound houses are scattered throughout the city, but most are south of 17th Avenue. The analysis also shows that most of the houses that have slipped from average or better condition in 2009 to fair, poor or unsound in 2013 were west of Plum Street and between Fourth and 17th avenues.

"I think we're going to have to look at this neighborhood," said Interim Appraiser Sue Poltera. "We rate neighborhoods, and we're probably going to have to redo that neighborhood. It's a borderline area. Plum to Monroe and 17th to Fourth, those houses were mainly built in the '30s and '40s, so they're starting to get some age on them. And as you get closer to Fourth, there are more rentals."

Widespread

Looking at a map showing red dots designating fair, poor and unsound houses scattered across the city, Poltera said there will almost certainly be more red dots if the map is redrawn in another year. Poltera explained that the appraiser's staff re-inspects 17 percent of the properties each year, meaning one out of six has its condition reassessed each year.

The county began using the software used to produce the data analyzed in 2009, which means the appraiser's staff hasn't assigned new condition ratings to all the houses in Hutchinson yet and will need at least one more year to do so.

The data received from the appraiser's office also included the valuation of each property. A comparison of those figures for 2009 and 2013 showed that 4,939 houses lost value. That was almost exactly one out of every three houses, and no area of town was immune.

That couldn't be tied entirely to the economy, because 9,226 houses, also in every part of the city, increased in value during the same period.

Speaking of those that decreased in value, Poltera said, "It's possible that's because the condition is not as good and they're not selling as well, because it's really based on the market. If the condition is lower, if it's going from fair to poor or unsound, it's not going to sell as well, so that value will be lower because of the market. If you have a really bad property, it's not going to sell very well - if at all."

Poltera said that even if your property's condition rating is average or better on a consistent basis, if other nearby properties are deteriorating in condition, eventually that will affect the value of your property as well as all others in the neighborhood.

Approach questioned

Unofficially, 17th Avenue has been a sort of line drawn in the sand in the city's efforts to halt the deterioration. The idea has been to try to save houses from Fifth to 17th and prevent deterioration from slowly creeping north of 17th.

The Housing Commission has identified what it calls the Allen School Neighborhood (bounded by 11th Avenue on the north, Fourth Avenue on the South, Main Street on the east and the Harsha Canal on the west) as one of two "opportunity neighborhoods" where it wants to target investment and assistance.

Last year, the city applied for a $175,000 HOME grant it hoped to use to rehabilitate eight homes in the neighborhood. However, the state, as a result of a reduction in federal funding for housing programs, eliminated all HOME grants and redirected that money into other programs.

The city also was turned down this year for a $400,000 Community Development Block Grant it had hoped to use to help low-income owners rehabilitate houses along East Avenue A. The city will soon submit another application for that grant.

But in a recent meeting with state officials to go over a Housing Assessment Tool, which accompanies the grant application, Housing Program Manager Irene Hart was questioned by a Kansas Department of Commerce official about the city's approach.

Noting that the city's enforcement of the International Property Maintenance Code is based on complaints from citizens and city inspectors cannot write up citations on their own initiative, the official said codes that are on the books should be enforced. The official also asked why the city doesn't have a rental inspection ordinance if the condition of rental housing is an acute problem,

City Council members and some members of the Housing Commission have been reluctant to embrace rental inspections, often citing questions about the frequency and cost of inspections and additional staff required to do the inspections as stumbling blocks. The Housing Commission is expected to study the problems with rentals and possible ordinances more closely in the next year.

Demolitions

In recent weeks, the City Council and Housing Commission have embraced a more aggressive approach to demolishing "unsafe" structures. Starting with a list of 500 of the "worst of the worst" houses provided by the appraiser's office, the city's Inspection Department has field-checked each address. To that they've added other houses that already were on the Inspection Department's radar.

According to Hart, city building official Trent Maxwell has concluded that there are about 100 that currently need to be demolished.

That corresponds closely with the appraiser's condition ratings, which showed 115 unsound houses in 2013. Poltera said unsound houses are dilapidated and unoccupied. She said there are other houses that should be classified as unsound, but as a matter of policy the appraiser's office classifies those houses as very poor instead if someone is still living in them.

The 2014 budget the City Council is expected to adopt next month includes $108,000 for demolitions, of which a portion has to be held back for emergency demolitions required when a house is severely damaged by fire. That means the budget will cover about 25 demolitions of dilapidated and unsafe houses, depending on their size.

But Hart said that demolition is not the only solution.

"People have to live someplace," she said. "How do we provide safe housing for the low-income poor? I don't have the answer."

Building an answer

The community's approach, she said, must be two-fold: demolishing the worst of the worst and preventing other houses from deteriorating to the point that they need to be demolished.

The ultimate solution, she said, is more jobs and better-paying jobs so that that people can afford to build new houses or better maintain existing houses.

"Look at the economy in 1950 and now," she said. "We don't have the value-added agriculture and manufacturing we did then. The population has stayed the same since about 1970. You can list all the factories that closed."

New housing starts in Hutchinson have slowed to a crawl in the last decade. In 2011, only 13 new single-family houses were built, which was the fewest since 1920. A year later, there was a slight increase to 21 single-family houses, and so far this year permits have been issued for 16 more. In the last 32 years, 100 or more single-family houses have been built only once - in 1996, when 127 were built.

Scanning a map of the city this past week, Hart questioned where one would build a subdivision of modest $140,000 houses. To the south, streets and utilities already exist, so special assessments would not be a factor. But some vacant lots south of downtown are undesirable as building sites because of the quality of the surrounding housing and, in some areas, the risk of subsidence from decades of solution salt mining.

More vacant land is available in the far northern reaches of the city, but many of those sites would require new streets, water and sewer lines, which means special assessments that deter some home buyers.

Hart is placing some hope in the creation of a land bank, to which owners could contribute unwanted property. The Community Housing Trust formed a year ago also could use donations or grants to purchase dilapidated property at tax sales and donate the property to the land bank for clearing by the city.

One idea is that adjacent small lots that once held smaller homes could be put together to create a building site large enough for a larger, more desirable modern home. Another possibility is that a larger number of lots could be assembled for development of a small subdivision.

Some lots placed in the land bank also could be turned into community gardens or sold to adjacent property owners to enlarge their yards.

Hart expects to present an ordinance creating a land bank in late August. The Housing Commission on Wednesday discussed potential candidates for a five-member board of directors that would be appointed by the City Council.

"We need to get the land bank up so we can start assembling some land," Hart said.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.